Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh are expected to appear in court Friday and ask a judge to dismiss the original murder indictments accusing him of killing his wife and son.
The defense now alleges that the case’s lead investigator misled the grand jury.
Murdaugh faces a retrial on the murder charges after the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned his convictions and life sentence. The court found that a clerk improperly influenced jurors during his 2023 trial.
Even if Judge Debra McCaslin grants the long-shot request to dismiss the indictments during Friday’s pretrial hearing, the decision may not halt—or even delay—the disgraced lawyer’s scheduled April retrial.
Prosecutors could obtain a new set of grand jury indictments as soon as next month, and defense attorneys have acknowledged they would not oppose that effort.
A ruling in Murdaugh’s favor, however, would represent another rebuke for lead investigator David Owen, an agent with the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
Last year, a judge dismissed a separate murder case involving Owen after the mother of the deceased woman said she had told the agent about her daughter’s suicide threat days before her death. Owen never passed that information to prosecutors or defense lawyers.
Owen retired abruptly in 2024, shortly after being named State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.
Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh, 58, killed his wife, Maggie, and their younger son, Paul, at the family’s sprawling South Carolina Lowcountry property in 2021.
Murdaugh is already serving decades in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients. In court, he has admitted to being a thief, insurance cheat, dishonest lawyer and longtime opioid addict.
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He continues to deny that he is a murderer.
Defense attorneys contend that Owen told the Colleton County grand jury, while seeking the indictments, that blood spatter had been found on a T-shirt Murdaugh wore on the night of the killings.
However, an earlier report by state agents said there were no blood stains, and that evidence was never presented at trial.
Owen also allegedly told grand jurors that the same combination of buckshot in one chamber and large birdshot in the other, used to kill Paul Murdaugh, had been found loaded in firearms throughout the Murdaugh property. Defense lawyers say that was not true.
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Prosecutors maintain that ample evidence supported the murder charges and wrote that “a single mistake is not bad faith.”
Owen also told the grand jury about a video recorded by Paul Murdaugh in which Alex Murdaugh’s voice could be heard at the scene, contradicting his denials.
He further described the family’s growing debts and said Murdaugh’s schemes to steal from clients and his law firm were nearing exposure.
Still, Murdaugh’s attorneys have repeatedly emphasized the limited physical evidence in the case. No DNA or blood was found splattered on Murdaugh or his clothing, despite prosecutors alleging that the killings occurred at close range with powerful weapons that have never been recovered.
Prosecutors allege that Murdaugh killed his wife and son believing the sympathy surrounding their deaths would give him time to conceal his thefts.
